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April 6, 2003
What America wants
Noam Chomsky analyzes the foreign policy goals of the United States in the Middle East and explains how Washington manipulates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to promote its narrow interests in the region
The latest phase of the Israel-Palestine conflict opened on September 29, 2000, on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak dispatched a massive and intimidating police and military presence to the Al-Aqsa compound. Predictably, that led to clashes as thousands of people streamed out of the mosque, leaving several Palestinians dead and 200 wounded. Whatever Barak may have intended, there could hardly have been a more effective way to set the stage for the shocking sequel, particularly after the visit of Ariel Sharon and his military entourage to the compound the day before, which might have passed without such serious consequences.
The opening events established the pattern for what followed. “During these crucial days there was no evidence of Palestinian gunfire,” an important UN inquiry found. In the following months, as far as the investigators could determine, “the IDF (Israeli Army), operating behind fortifications with superior weaponry, endured not a single serious casualty as a result of Palestinian demonstrations and, further, their soldiers seemed to be in no life-threatening danger during the course of these events”, as they killed hundreds of Palestinians and imposed an even more brutal regime than before, subjecting the population to harsh collective punishment and humiliation, the hallmark of the occupation for many years.
The UN report found that the majority of Israeli casualties resulted from incidents on settlements roads and at relatively isolated checkpoints ... as a consequence of the settlements, and irritations resulting indirectly therefrom. In this regard, account must be taken of settler violence against Palestinian civilians in areas adjoining settlements, and of IDF complicity in such violence...
The pattern of events underscores a fact of crucial importance. It is highly misleading to use the phrase “Israel-Palestine conflict”, as I did at the outset: it should be termed the “US/Israel-Palestine” conflict. For similar reasons, it is misleading — and particularly in the US, improper — to condemn “Israeli atrocities”, just as such practice would have been inappropriate in the case of Russian-backed crimes in Eastern Europe, US-backed crimes in Central America (where it was the practice), and innumerable other such examples.
These conclusions are illustrated graphically by the events in the first days of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. On September 30, the IDF killed twelve-year-old Muhammad Al-Dirra in response to rock throwing (in which he was not involved) near the small Israeli settlement at Netzarim, which is hardly more than an excuse for a major military base and road system that cut the Gaza Strip in two, one of several barriers separating Gaza City from the south (and Egypt). “IDF soldiers in a heavily protected bunker fired repeatedly upon Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) ambulances attempting to evacuate” the severely wounded boy and other casualties, Human Rights Watch reported. “The firing from the IDF outpost continued for at least forty-five minutes, although during this time there was no apparent return fire from Palestinian demonstrators or police.” ...
All of this proceeds thanks to direct US support, tolerance and evasion.
The next day, October 1, “Israeli special forces firing from and around a well-protected rooftop position” killed two Palestinians, facing no apparent threat themselves. On the same day, Israel escalated the level of violence when “an IDF helicopter gunship fired recklessly and repeatedly on areas immediately adjacent to the (PRCS) field hospital at Netzarim, disrupting operations there,” at least 400 metres from any clashes; and on the Egypt-Gaza border, helicopters fired missiles that killed two Palestinians and wounded dozens.
The next day, October 2, helicopters firing missiles at buildings and cars in the Netzarim area killed ten Palestinians and wounded 35. IDF helicopters are US helicopters with Israeli pilots. US supply is critical because “it is impractical to think that we can manufacture helicopters or major weapons systems of this type in Israel,” the Ministry of Defence reported.
On October 3, the defence correspondent of Israel’s most prestigious newspaper reported the signing of an agreement with the Clinton Administration for “the largest purchase of military helicopters by the Israeli Air Force in a decade”, along with spare parts for Apache attack helicopters for which an agreement had been signed in mid-September. Also in mid-September, the Israeli press reported, US Marines carried out a joint exercise with the IDF in the Negev aimed at reconquest of the territories that had been transferred to the Palestinian Authority...
Rushing new military helicopters to Israel under these circumstances and with such authorization for use is surely newsworthy. There was no news report or editorial comment. The sole mention in the US was in an opinion piece in Raleigh, North Carolina. An Amnesty International condemnation of the sale of US helicopters also passed in silence. That remained true in the months that followed, including a shipment in February 2001, a $0.5 billion deal for Boeing Apache Longbow helicopters, the most advanced in the US arsenal, noted marginally in the US as business news.
In a similar style, a major news story (May 17) reports the reluctance of President Bush to become more “directly involved” in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and his Administration’s inability to support the Mitchell committee report by asking Israel for a settlement freeze because Prime Minister Sharon is “philosophically opposed to such a proposal”. On the same day, under “World Briefing” a few lines report that the US Army Corps of Engineers began construction of a $266 million Israeli military base (paid for by the US) in the Negev, a symbol “of America’s continuing commitment to Israel’s security”, Ambassador Martin Indyk declared.
Well reported, however, are stern US admonitions to Palestinians to end their terror, because “we do not believe in rewarding violence” (Ambassador Indyk); and regular official statements deploring violence and expressing tempered disapproval of Israel’s assassination programme. Washington’s actual attitudes are revealed by its actions; the coverage speaks for itself.
None of this is unusual. With regard to Israel-Palestine specifically, the pattern has been routine for over 30 years, ever since the US separated itself from the international consensus on the conflict. Though the most significant facts are missing from mainstream commentary, and often ignored or misrepresented even in scholarly work, they are not controversial. They provide the indispensable background for any serious understanding of what is happening now.
US-Israel relations improved dramatically after Israel’s military victory in 1967. In the background, as always with regard to this region, lie its incomparable energy resources. Emerging from the second world war as the overwhelmingly dominant global power, the US undertook careful and sophisticated planning to organize the world system in its interests.
That included effective control over the region’s oil, previously shared with France and Britain. France was removed, and the British gradually declined to the status of a “junior partner”, in the rueful words of a British Foreign Office official. Though there was much talk about the Russians, and there is no doubt that the possibility of global war was the major element in strategic planning, the immediate problem throughout was the threat of independent nationalism — a fact now largely conceded, even in official documents.
In essentials, the US took over the framework of control of the Middle East established by Britain after the first world war. The states of the region were to be administered by what Britain called an “Arab Facade”, weak and pliable; Britain’s “absorption” of the colonies would be “veiled by constitutional fictions as a protectorate, a sphere of influence, a buffer state, and so on”, a device more cost-effective than direct rule. When needed, British muscle would be available. The US modified the system by incorporating a second tier of “local cops on the beat”, as the Nixon Administration called them: local gendarmes to ensure order, preferably non-Arab, with police HQ in Washington, and US-UK force in reserve.
Throughout this period, Turkey has been considered a base for US power in the region. Iran was another, after the effort by its conservative nationalist government to gain control over its resources was thwarted by a UK-US military coup in 1953. By 1948, the US Joint Chief of Staffs were already impressed with Israel’s military prowess, describing the new state as the major regional military power after Turkey. Israel could offer the US means to “gain strategic advantage in the Middle East that would offset the effects of the decline of British power in that area,” the JCS concluded.
In 1958, the CIA advised that “a logical corollary” of opposition to Arab nationalism “would be to support Israel as the only reliable pro-Western power left in the Middle East”. The reasoning was implemented only after 1967, when Israel performed a highly valued service to the US by destroying Nasser, the symbol of Arab nationalism, feared and detested as a “virus” who might “infect others”, a “rotten apple who might spoil the barrel”, in the conventional terminology of planners, commonly reshaped for public purposes as the “domino theory”.
By the early 1970s, a tacit tripartite alliance of “local cops” had taken shape under the US aegis: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel (Turkey is taken for granted; Pakistan was an associate for a time). With by far the largest petroleum reserves, Saudi Arabia is the central component of the Facade; any serious departure from obedience would doubtlessly, bring harsh penalties. The arrangements were publicly explained by US intelligence specialists, and also by political figures, notably Henry Jackson, the Senate’s leading specialist on the Middle East and oil. He observed that thanks to the “strength and western orientation” of Israel and Iran, these two “reliable friends of the United States”, along with Saudi Arabia, “have served to inhibit and contain those irresponsible and radical elements in certain Arab states ... who, were they free to do so, would pose a grave threat indeed to our principal sources of petroleum in the Gulf” (meaning primarily profit flow and a lever of world control; the US was not dependent on Middle East oil for its own use).
US domination of the Gulf region had already come under threat in 1958, when the Iraqi military overthrew the main British client regime. Internal US-UK records provide a revealing account of their concerns and plans, essential background for understanding the Gulf War in 1991. Nasser’s Egypt, as noted, was considered the major threat until Israel’s 1967 victory; US aid to Israel increased rapidly, even more so in 1970 when Israel performed another important service, blocking potential Syrian support for Palestinians being massacred in Jordan.
The fall of the Shah in 1979 was a serious blow. President Carter at once sent a NATO general to try to instigate a military coup. When this failed, the two remaining pillars — Saudi Arabia and Israel — joined the US in an effort to overthrow the regime by providing military aid; that is the conventional device to overthrow a civilian government, employed with great success in Indonesia and Chile not long before. Exploiting its intimate relations with the Shah’s regime, Israel reestablished military contacts and sent US arms, funded by Saudi Arabia.
The goals of the operation were explained clearly and publicly at once, but largely ignored in the US; later, they were reframed in the more acceptable terms of an “arms for hostage” deal, though that could not have been the initial motivation, since there were no hostages. The US-Israeli-Saudi project was an entirely natural reaction to the downfall of the Shah, given the basic structure of the system of control. When Washington’s friend and ally Saddam Hussein fell out of favour for disobeying orders (his huge crimes and programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction were of little consequence, as the record of US-UK support for him demonstrates), the US turned to the “dual containment policy”, aimed at Iran and Iraq.
Excerpted with permission from
Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World
Pluto Press. Available at Liberty Books (Pvt) Ltd, 3 Rafiq Plaza, M.R. Kayani Road, Saddar, Karachi
Tel: 021-5683026
Email: libooks@cyber.net.pk
Website: www.libertybooks.com
ISBN 0-7453-1980-7
233pp. Rs795
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